The first film based on author Suzanne Collins’ best-selling young adult series hit theaters in March as a bona fide cultural phenomenon from Day 1; the quality of the film was probably always going to be secondary, much as with the “Twilight” films, which have made bundles and bundles of money while all being almost entirely terrible. But it’s a pleasant surprise to discover that “The Hunger Games” is indeed a good movie. It seems like there are a ton of places “The Hunger Games” could have gone awry, but fortunately it avoided pretty much all of that by smartly casting its characters, intelligently building its detailed future dystopia and directing with momentum and skill, not flinching away from some of the violence that is the hallmark of the series while still not falling over the edge into exploitation.

Jennifer Lawrence, an Academy Award nominee for 2010’s “Winter’s Bone,” stars as Katniss Everdeen, a youthful citizen of District 12 of the nation of Panem, who is drafted into the annual Hunger Games celebration in place of her younger sister. I’ll spare you the details of the plot, so you can see the film fresh — and you should — but the Hunger Games are a massive, televised battle to the death for its 24 tributes, from which only one person can emerge alive. Slightly complicating matters, if you can complicate a battle to the death, is Katniss’ fellow District 12 tribute, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who harbors a crush on her. Katniss must navigate the political and televised arenas of the Capitol before she even makes it into the Hunger Games, and her rebellious streak might draw the ire of the government, including the president himself (Donald Sutherland).

Gary Ross directs with flair, but his cast elevates the material into better-than-average science fiction. “The Hunger Games” will be released Saturday. $30.98 DVD, $39.99 Blu-ray.

“THE RAID: REDEMPTION”

Gareth Huw Evans’ miraculous “The Raid: Redemption” is one of the best action films in any language in years, a shot of pure adrenaline that so rarely lets up in its melee of punching, kicking, gunfire, martial arts and other assorted violence that it would be unsurprising to find yourself out of breath by the end of the film. As enervating as it is, it’s also just a nonstop, exhilarating blast of a martial arts film, with a deceptively simple concept that had almost shockingly never been attempted before.

The film takes place in Jakarta, Indonesia. A SWAT team, including the rookie Rama (Iko Uwais, star of Evans’s prior film “Merantau”), is preparing to raid an apartment building that serves as the headquarters of a powerful crime boss (Ray Sahetapy). All 15 floors of the building are presumably filled with sentries, armed gangs and other such unsavories, so it’s imperative that the raid go smoothly and quietly. Of course, it doesn’t; the cops find themselves besieged and overwhelmed, with Rama — a more-than-capable fighter with and without weaponry — still on the mission, which may have a personal motivation.

The action is inventive, never repetitive and consistently thrilling; there is little else to the movie but this is more than enough to sustain it. It’s kind of brilliant, in its own genre trappings, and fans of these sorts of movies will love it. $30.99 DVD, $35.99 Blu-ray.

“HICK”

Director Derick Martini previously adeptly balanced tone and quirk in his 1980s-set family drama “Lymelife” a few years ago — at least as successfully as that modestly scaled, only reasonably ambitious film needed — which makes the dissonant “Hick,” his newest feature, all the more baffling of an artistic misfire, wallowing in misery with little reward or interest.

The film follows the 13-year-old Luli (Chloe Grace Moretz, a great performer in virtually every other film she’s been in), who packs it in with her inattentive parents and hits the road to find stardom with little other than her wits and a pistol. On the road she meets a young female grifter (Blake Lively) and a creepy, charming, possibly sociopathic young man named Eddie (Eddie Redmayne), who may be developing some unfortunate designs on Luli. The characters Luli encounters throughout her journey range from unsavory to outright horrible, with little gradation in between; so too is the screenplay, adapted by Andrea Portes from her own novel, which moves from terrible incident to terrible incident with Martini’s tone-deaf, detached and ironic camera fumblingly showing us everything. Mostly.

In any case, “Hick” is a disaster from a talented filmmaker who sought to show us something — but I surely don’t know what it was, and I don’t entirely know Martini had a grasp on it either. $29.99 DVD.

“KILL LIST”

If you should see “Kill List” and come away from the film with any certain idea of what the film is actually about, or what its ending means, send me an email and share your interpretation. I’m curious to hear. But despite that lack of clarity, “Kill List” is one truly sinister, unnerving film, creeping you out ceaselessly and building to one unbelievably horrifying ending. Director Ben Wheatley turns the hitman crime genre on its ear and mixes a bit of … well, just what, I’d hate to spoil, but needless to say he draws from the deep well of British cult films and comes up with a pretty inspired influence while playing everything for maximum dread.

Neil Maskell plays Jay, an unemployed veteran who has fallen on hard times in his marriage. After a dinner party goes calamitously wrong, his old friend Gal (Michael Smiley) makes him a job offer, the specifics of which I’ll be vague about but the practice of which leads down the proverbial rabbit hole into unsettling and frightening territory.

Don’t look for logic, necessarily; I’m not even sure answers are there for certain, though “Kill List” could stand to be rewatched, I’m sure. But it’ll get under your skin.

One tip, though: You may need subtitles, as the accents of our characters may be difficult to understand at times. That won’t affect the mood, which is off-putting, to say the least. $24.98 DVD, $29.98 Blu-ray.

“TONIGHT YOU’RE MINE”

After a disagreement that almost turns destructive at a Scottish music festival, an American rocker (Luke Treadaway of “Attack the Block”) is handcuffed to a Scottish rocker (Natalia Tena of the “Harry Potter” films).

This is the dreadful contrivance that sets up the romantic comedy “Tonight You’re Mine.” It doesn’t much improve from there, though director David Mackenzie, who previously released a very different film, the apocalyptic drama “Perfect Sense,” earlier this year, obviously has a great deal of fondness for the setting. “Tonight You’re Mine” does indeed get some mileage from the milieu, but some artful photography of people having a good time isn’t enough to make me have a good time, particularly when the film is spent in the company of these two musicians as they search for the security guard with the keys, perform their gigs and fall in love.

The protagonists are generally unpleasant and entitled, and come together in romance through their shared passion, which I guess is supposed to make me feel something about the transformative power of music, but just made me wish I were attending a similar festival, which seems much more fun. $22.99 DVD.

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“THE HUNGER GAMES”

The first film based on author Suzanne Collins’ best-selling young adult series hit theaters in March as a bona fide cultural phenomenon from Day 1; the quality of the film was probably always going to be secondary, much as with the “Twilight” films, which have made bundles and bundles of money while all being almost entirely terrible. But it’s a pleasant surprise to discover that “The Hunger Games” is indeed a good movie. It seems like there are a ton of places “The Hunger Games” could have gone awry, but fortunately it avoided pretty much all of that by smartly casting its characters, intelligently building its detailed future dystopia and directing with momentum and skill, not flinching away from some of the violence that is the hallmark of the series while still not falling over the edge into exploitation.

Jennifer Lawrence, an Academy Award nominee for 2010’s “Winter’s Bone,” stars as Katniss Everdeen, a youthful citizen of District 12 of the nation of Panem, who is drafted into the annual Hunger Games celebration in place of her younger sister. I’ll spare you the details of the plot, so you can see the film fresh — and you should — but the Hunger Games are a massive, televised battle to the death for its 24 tributes, from which only one person can emerge alive. Slightly complicating matters, if you can complicate a battle to the death, is Katniss’ fellow District 12 tribute, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who harbors a crush on her. Katniss must navigate the political and televised arenas of the Capitol before she even makes it into the Hunger Games, and her rebellious streak might draw the ire of the government, including the president himself (Donald Sutherland).

Gary Ross directs with flair, but his cast elevates the material into better-than-average science fiction. “The Hunger Games” will be released Saturday. $30.98 DVD, $39.99 Blu-ray.

“THE RAID: REDEMPTION”

Gareth Huw Evans’ miraculous “The Raid: Redemption” is one of the best action films in any language in years, a shot of pure adrenaline that so rarely lets up in its melee of punching, kicking, gunfire, martial arts and other assorted violence that it would be unsurprising to find yourself out of breath by the end of the film. As enervating as it is, it’s also just a nonstop, exhilarating blast of a martial arts film, with a deceptively simple concept that had almost shockingly never been attempted before.

The film takes place in Jakarta, Indonesia. A SWAT team, including the rookie Rama (Iko Uwais, star of Evans’s prior film “Merantau”), is preparing to raid an apartment building that serves as the headquarters of a powerful crime boss (Ray Sahetapy). All 15 floors of the building are presumably filled with sentries, armed gangs and other such unsavories, so it’s imperative that the raid go smoothly and quietly. Of course, it doesn’t; the cops find themselves besieged and overwhelmed, with Rama — a more-than-capable fighter with and without weaponry — still on the mission, which may have a personal motivation.

The action is inventive, never repetitive and consistently thrilling; there is little else to the movie but this is more than enough to sustain it. It’s kind of brilliant, in its own genre trappings, and fans of these sorts of movies will love it. $30.99 DVD, $35.99 Blu-ray.

“HICK”

Director Derick Martini previously adeptly balanced tone and quirk in his 1980s-set family drama “Lymelife” a few years ago — at least as successfully as that modestly scaled, only reasonably ambitious film needed — which makes the dissonant “Hick,” his newest feature, all the more baffling of an artistic misfire, wallowing in misery with little reward or interest.

The film follows the 13-year-old Luli (Chloe Grace Moretz, a great performer in virtually every other film she’s been in), who packs it in with her inattentive parents and hits the road to find stardom with little other than her wits and a pistol. On the road she meets a young female grifter (Blake Lively) and a creepy, charming, possibly sociopathic young man named Eddie (Eddie Redmayne), who may be developing some unfortunate designs on Luli. The characters Luli encounters throughout her journey range from unsavory to outright horrible, with little gradation in between; so too is the screenplay, adapted by Andrea Portes from her own novel, which moves from terrible incident to terrible incident with Martini’s tone-deaf, detached and ironic camera fumblingly showing us everything. Mostly.

In any case, “Hick” is a disaster from a talented filmmaker who sought to show us something — but I surely don’t know what it was, and I don’t entirely know Martini had a grasp on it either. $29.99 DVD.

“KILL LIST”

If you should see “Kill List” and come away from the film with any certain idea of what the film is actually about, or what its ending means, send me an email and share your interpretation. I’m curious to hear. But despite that lack of clarity, “Kill List” is one truly sinister, unnerving film, creeping you out ceaselessly and building to one unbelievably horrifying ending. Director Ben Wheatley turns the hitman crime genre on its ear and mixes a bit of … well, just what, I’d hate to spoil, but needless to say he draws from the deep well of British cult films and comes up with a pretty inspired influence while playing everything for maximum dread.

Neil Maskell plays Jay, an unemployed veteran who has fallen on hard times in his marriage. After a dinner party goes calamitously wrong, his old friend Gal (Michael Smiley) makes him a job offer, the specifics of which I’ll be vague about but the practice of which leads down the proverbial rabbit hole into unsettling and frightening territory.

Don’t look for logic, necessarily; I’m not even sure answers are there for certain, though “Kill List” could stand to be rewatched, I’m sure. But it’ll get under your skin.

One tip, though: You may need subtitles, as the accents of our characters may be difficult to understand at times. That won’t affect the mood, which is off-putting, to say the least. $24.98 DVD, $29.98 Blu-ray.

“TONIGHT YOU’RE MINE”

After a disagreement that almost turns destructive at a Scottish music festival, an American rocker (Luke Treadaway of “Attack the Block”) is handcuffed to a Scottish rocker (Natalia Tena of the “Harry Potter” films).

This is the dreadful contrivance that sets up the romantic comedy “Tonight You’re Mine.” It doesn’t much improve from there, though director David Mackenzie, who previously released a very different film, the apocalyptic drama “Perfect Sense,” earlier this year, obviously has a great deal of fondness for the setting. “Tonight You’re Mine” does indeed get some mileage from the milieu, but some artful photography of people having a good time isn’t enough to make me have a good time, particularly when the film is spent in the company of these two musicians as they search for the security guard with the keys, perform their gigs and fall in love.

The protagonists are generally unpleasant and entitled, and come together in romance through their shared passion, which I guess is supposed to make me feel something about the transformative power of music, but just made me wish I were attending a similar festival, which seems much more fun. $22.99 DVD.